$700 billion worth of patriotism?
Last week, Joe Biden told us it was patriotic for us to pay more taxes.
Then yesterday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson implied that it was also patriotic for us to put up $700 billion in bailouts for Wall Street bankers who took bad business risks.
But is there anybody on the national scene who thinks it’s patriotic to let shareholders of successful businesses keep their profits, and shareholders of unsuccessful businesses endure their losses? Doesn’t anyone think it’s patriotic to reduce, rather than expand, the powers of the federal government? Isn’t a key component of patriotism — at least the American variety — the preservation of liberty? And doesn’t liberty include the freedom to fail, as well as to succeed?
I’ve heard all the explanations that the alternatives to this unprecedented power grab by Washington are just too awful to contemplate. And I’ve acknowledged several times that I have no expertise in high finance. But I do know that if the feds are willing to use $700 billion of our money to buy short-term stability in the financial markets, they’re getting way more than $700 billion in new, raw power.
There’s nothing patriotic about that.
The $700 billion bailout
I join Andy in expressing grave reservations about this bailout. First, it won’t be the current American taxpayer who will finance this $700 billion handout. The federal government will sell bonds to finance the deal, and governments from China, Russia, Japan, India, and the Middle East will buy them up. It will our kids and grandkids and great grandkids who will be paying off these bonds, WITH interest I might add, making this a $1.4 trillion bailout. This is supposed to make our nation more secure? Second, we are in this mess in the first place because the federal government has allowed certain companies to get so big that when they start to falter, there is a potential to upend the entire economy. We wouldn’t be in this mess if the federal government had not abandoned regulation of the financial markets. The Republicans are now no different than Democrats — using other people’s money to fix problems they created in the first place.
Magnolia Tribune
